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Linux Kernel Fastboot [pdf]

linuxplumbersconf.org

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Re: Linux Kernel Fastboot [pdf]

#4

Post by jmccorm »

How nostalgic! Mind you, I say that in a good way!

This brings me back to the heydays of Sun Microsystems where they controlled both the hardware (SPARC) and the operating system (Solaris). Sun didn't hesitate to use this to their advantage. With Clear Linux, I see Intel doing some very similar things. Yes, this was just a story about boot time, but it led me to take a look at Clear Linux and it looks like it could be a star. I'm interested in how much more performance their distribtuion is able to squeeze out. I'm also wondering how they're dividing their focus here and what high notes they're trying to achieve.

At a strategic level, I'm assuming that they're wanting to distinguish themselves from ARM? Are they looking to create a well-tuned reference for other Linux distributions on Intel to adopt? At a tactical level, I see they're focusing on performance, availability (which boot time would be a function of)... but are they tweaking for other things such as reliability? Fault tolerance?

Until now, Clear Linux wasn't even on my radar. Today, it is. Anyone have some experiences with this distro (for better or worse) that they'd like to share?

Re: Linux Kernel Fastboot [pdf]

#5

Post by Filligree »

jmccorm wrote: post #4

How nostalgic! Mind you, I say that in a good way! This brings me back to the heydays of Sun Microsystems where they controlled both the hardware (SPARC) and the operating system (Solaris). Sun didn't hesitate to use this to their advantage. With Clear Linux, I see Intel doing some very similar things. Yes, this was just a story about boot time, but it led me to take a look at Clear Linux and it looks like it could b…

> Anyone have some experiences with this distro (for better or worse) that they'd like to share?

Not much of one, but for a while I was playing with multiple distros trying to find the best possible power management for my laptop. (XPS 13 9380.)

Clear did better than the Ubuntu installation that came with it -- but a dead octopus would have done better than that. It was sitting at 6W for non-CPU-intensive work, and was also noticeably snapppier. Windows on the same hardware sits at 8W when idling; same as Ubuntu.

More recently I've tried Arch, though. Which somehow got that same workload down to 3.3W, albeit with a lot of adjustments... that didn't seem to affect performance, but did affect power use, clearly.

It's just too bad that all of this optimization goes out the window if I fire up a browser, but I've had a fun time finding ways to avoid that.

Apart from that, obviously Clear's software repository is far more limited than Arch's, and it also seems harder to contribute to. I don't think that problem will be going away soon.

Re: Linux Kernel Fastboot [pdf]

#6

Post by etaioinshrdlu »

jmccorm wrote: post #4

How nostalgic! Mind you, I say that in a good way! This brings me back to the heydays of Sun Microsystems where they controlled both the hardware (SPARC) and the operating system (Solaris). Sun didn't hesitate to use this to their advantage. With Clear Linux, I see Intel doing some very similar things. Yes, this was just a story about boot time, but it led me to take a look at Clear Linux and it looks like it could b…

My experience with Clear Linux maybe a year ago was that it was one of the more unusual linux distro's I've tinkered with. They seem to be reinventing the wheel in many places, for example, it has its own package manager, and its own unique implementation of containers. Stuff that would seem to not have much to do with performance.

Also, NVIDIA CUDA drivers didn't work. Not sure who's fault that is. Probably both NVIDIA and Intel's.

All in all, it did boot quickly on AWS, but it was not a fun time at all.

Re: Linux Kernel Fastboot [pdf]

#7

Post by nobleach »

Filligree wrote: post #5
jmccorm wrote: post #4

How nostalgic! Mind you, I say that in a good way! This brings me back to the heydays of Sun Microsystems where they controlled both the hardware (SPARC) and the operating system (Solaris). Sun didn't hesitate to use this to their advantage. With Clear Linux, I see Intel doing some very similar things. Yes, this was just a story about boot time, but it led me to take a look at Clear Linux and it looks like it could b…

> Anyone have some experiences with this distro (for better or worse) that they'd like to share? Not much of one, but for a while I was playing with multiple distros trying to find the best possible power management for my laptop. (XPS 13 9380.) Clear did better than the Ubuntu installation that came with it -- but a dead octopus would have done better than that . It was sitting at 6W for non-CPU-intensive work, and…

I'd love to hear more about the tweaks you've done to Arch. I've gone little beyond a few power management things myself (On a Thinkpad X1C Gen 6). I get decent battery life, but I know it could be better. And giving up Arch would be a tough sell to myself.

Re: Linux Kernel Fastboot [pdf]

#8

Post by jcastro »

jmccorm wrote: post #4

How nostalgic! Mind you, I say that in a good way! This brings me back to the heydays of Sun Microsystems where they controlled both the hardware (SPARC) and the operating system (Solaris). Sun didn't hesitate to use this to their advantage. With Clear Linux, I see Intel doing some very similar things. Yes, this was just a story about boot time, but it led me to take a look at Clear Linux and it looks like it could b…

Been using it on my work laptop for about a year now, it's nice if you want a normal GNOME desktop and cloud tools. It silently updates itself in the background multiple times a day, which is really nice, there's really no need to do manual maintenance.

Most of the useful apps are available via flathub, which it comes with so you just install slack, vscode, etc. that way.

Re: Linux Kernel Fastboot [pdf]

#10

Post by tbrock »

nobleach wrote: post #7
Filligree wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anyone have some experiences with this distro (for better or worse) that they'd like to share? Not much of one, but for a while I was playing with multiple distros trying to find the best possible power management for my laptop. (XPS 13 9380.) Clear did better than the Ubuntu installation that came with it -- but a dead octopus would have done better than that . It was sitting at 6W for non-CPU-intensive work, and…

I'd love to hear more about the tweaks you've done to Arch. I've gone little beyond a few power management things myself (On a Thinkpad X1C Gen 6). I get decent battery life, but I know it could be better. And giving up Arch would be a tough sell to myself.

The thing with arch is it’s mostly not more tweaks that give you better battery, it’s not having all the crap that Ubuntu preloads running that makes that happen.
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